


what might have been

by persephonix



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Death, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Not Beta Read, Stanley Uris Has OCD - Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Stanley Uris-centric, adapted from an old short fic i wrote when the first movie came out, and it's fine i promise, basically i'm sad and i miss my baby boy stan, because pennywise is a dickhead, but at the end, but now tailored to fit the canon plot of the new movie, mike/stan is more minor but still present, minor homophobia and ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 20:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20588882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephonix/pseuds/persephonix
Summary: there are infinite parallel universes. in some of them, mike chooses not to call upon his friends in his hour of need, and the last memories of their early years of torment die with him. in others, there was never any need for such a thing, since georgie didn't leave the house that one lonely rainy day, and pennywise targeted a different group of wayward kids. in still more, the losers never make it out of the sewers in the first place, falling together as children in that first terrifying battle.and in one, in one single, glowing reality, stanley uris chooses not to remove his pawn from the board, and everything turns out better than expected.





	what might have been

stan puts down the phone, and for a moment he contemplates a future that isn’t any sort of future at all. a future that’s a big burnt hole, ripped and singed away by what he could do next. he heard the hesitation in mike’s (mike, mike, how could he forget mike? mike hanlon, always there for him, always present, a steady hand to hold, a steady shoulder to lean on) voice, and in that hesitation he could hear his own demise spelled out.

but he puts down the phone, and finishes his puzzle, and quietly talks to patricia over dinner, and the next morning he gets onto a plane to derry and steps out into a town that they all forgot.

it feels wrong to be at the restaurant. he can’t shake a feeling that he stepped out of line somehow, that him even being there was never supposed to happen. and it’s hard, so terribly hard, to fit back in with the group. he supposes he’s glad that they all came. if they hadn’t, something would go wrong, something would be worse. there had to be seven (seven, not divisible by two, not a five or a zero, but perfect in its own regard), or else…or else…

he’s not sure the end to that sentence. his hands shake throughout dinner, and his tongue feels heavy. he can’t bring himself to add much to the conversation that goes on. the only thing he can think about is a dim memory of lights swirling in a toothy maw, spitting treacherous venom down his throat.

but stan has always been quiet. richie, with his newfound fame and trademark loud mouth, needles everyone at the table, and occasionally tries to push it with stan only to become quickly distracted by the clearly burning desire to harass eddie (and stan knows, of course stan knows. he doesn’t need to be told anything to know what richie can’t bring himself to say. stan watches, and stan picks things up, and stan keeps his mouth sealed tight, tight, tight. what else are friends for? because of course he remembers richie, now. he can’t believe he ever forgot). ben chats to all of them, sweet and peace-keeping as ever, but he keeps looking toward beverly, and stan thinks he’s starting to remember that, too. that kicked-puppy expression ben always had on his face, and the way bev can’t seem to figure out if she cares to watch bill or ben more.

mike notices stan’s silence. of course he does. but there’s a new manic glow in mike’s eyes, and the way he talks is louder, more excited, less reserved. stan doesn’t know what to think about that, but he hopes it’s a good thing. it doesn’t quite feel like one, though. he thinks there used to be something different, to their relationship. sitting silently together and watching birds while their feet lazily kicked back and forth in the cool spring waters.

stan’s barely spoken a word since they all arrived and he feels like he’s choking, like all his childhood terrors are rising in his throat and filling his lungs, and if he tried to talk he’d only be able to scream.

and then there’s bill. he comes and sits down next to stan in one of the less hectic moments, while richie and eddie shout at each other and the others egg them on. he wraps an arm around stan, and that’s what stan was looking for. they don’t need to talk. they just sit, and stan listens to bill’s heartbeat, and bill toys with stan’s curls, and it’s like they’re kids again. it’s like before that fateful summer, before georgie (did bill forget georgie, over the years, like they all forgot each other? stan remembers him. he remembers georgie’s laugh, georgie’s smile, georgie assuring stan that out of all bill’s friends, he was georgie’s favorite) was taken, and innocence followed suit.

they have to collect artifacts, mike says. artifacts to defeat pennywise. the group hems and haws, but they’re all there, and they all decide to go through with it, splitting up to find their own. stan hates that part. he hates watching them walk away, terrified that they’ll disappear just as he’s gotten them back.

he finds the hairnets in the old base ben built. he opens the box and pulls them out, runs his fingers over them as he remembers. such a stupid little thing, but it had meant so much to him, at the time. it had meant safety, and protecting his friends from the threat of spiders. always protecting. 

the darkness fills up with voices as he sits there, and he finds his breath is lost again. they remind him of the painted woman and her face and how it made him itch, itch, itch. his scars (oh yes, he had scars, he remembered how he got those, too, now) broke open and spilled spiders down his cheeks, and he screamed, clawing at his skin to get them off. _you’re supposed to be dead, stan the man,_ the voices croon, _you’re the weakest, you’re pathetic, you’re going to weigh them down and they’ll abandon you because they never, never, never cared about you. mike doesn’t love you, and neither does bill. isn’t it silly, you silly little boy, isn’t it stupid to fall in love with two of your friends? you always did have to take things in pairs. and isn’t it funny that both of them would hate you, if they knew? they're not gay, they're good boys, and even if they were, who could love someone as damaged and as craaaaazy as you, other than that slut you call a wife? you should’ve slit your wrists back in that bathtub. at least you’d serve a purpose in death._

stan spits curses into the shadows and pulls himself out of the base. He lies gasping on the forest floor, heels of his palms pressed hard enough into his eyes to cause bursts of light to dance behind his lids. he struggles to his feet and stands there, swaying, for another minute or two, before forcing himself to return with the others to the inn.

bowers is there, somehow. stabs eddie, escapes, attacks mike, dies. stan barely has time to process the return of henry to his life before the bully is ripped away, permanently. he stares down at him and almost feels bad. the broken look in his eyes was hard to witness and not feel at least some modicum of guilt. but then he remembers how bowers hurt mike, and stan finds he runs out of pity, after that.

the others are shaken. all of them, it seems, saw their own private horrors. bill’s clutching a bloody boat in his hands, richie’s repetitively rubbing away at a token, eddie’s fingers are tap-tap-tapping on an old inhaler. no one asks. there’s no time to ask, now.

they go to neibolt, and go down into the sewers, and when stan feels himself slipping, slipping, slipping away, he doesn’t need to ask bill to hold onto him. bill does it by himself, hand steady and warm in stan’s, and stan finds it in him to fight. he gets ripped away from bill and finds himself back in his father’s office, and the woman from the painting pins him down and he can hear raucous laughter, and-

bill. he hears bill.

he breaks through the surface of the water and bill pulls him to shore. eddie stabs the monstrous true form of pennywise and spends too long gloating. stan tackles him to the ground just before the creature’s claw can gore the other man, and he feels, there, too, that something has gone awry. the universe crumples around him for a split second and then flattens out, and he’s alive, and eddie’s alive under him, squawking something about being claustrophobic, and the fight continues.

when the war is won, and they’re splashing in the warm waters of their childhood lake, bill asks stan if he’s at peace now. stan thinks, and says no, no. it’s not in his nature to be at peace, not when everything in the world burns his skull, not when he can so rarely even attempt to fight off the all-powerful urge to correct his environment. he can’t rest until the world is perfect, and it will never be perfect, so he can never rest.

bill tilts his head back and laughs that same old laugh, and then he asks if stan’s _happy_.

stan takes longer to answer before he says yes. he has a good life, a good job. he has a good wife, a woman he loves and who loves him back with every fiber of her being, fierce and lovely and worth returning to. they have a vacation planned, after this. he has the freedom to plan his days according to his idiosyncratic schedule. he wakes up at dawn to watch the birds lift their heads to chirp at the rising sun.

he eyes bill, for a moment longer, and then tells him that he’d be happy if he were able to wake up to watch those birds with bill at his side. bill presses their foreheads together and tells stan that he’d be happy if that had been how it worked out, too. and then bill smiles, in that way that looks so painfully reminiscent of when they were children, and when they’re on dry land they all exchange numbers, all seven of them (and stan wonders why he feels there should only be five celebrating the end). 

richie brings eddie to an old fence on the side of the road, and stan watches them from a distance as they talk to each other and finish an old etching that he remembers, now, all too well. they link hands, hesitantly, like they’re still not quite sure what they’re doing, and head off back to the hotel. ben and beverly are locked together, inseparable, and stan doesn’t want to intrude. bill has work to do, and he leaves with one last apologetic goodbye and a final tight hug for stan.

stan and mike are the last to leave, when the others return to their lives. mike’s grown quiet, again, and stan rests his head on the other man’s shoulder and stares down at mike’s book of memories. he asks him where he plans to go, and mike isn’t sure, and stan, in a moment of uncharacteristic impulsivity, invites his old friend to stay at his place.

patricia is understanding beyond belief, and it reminds him why he loves her so much. mike only stays for a few days before he packs up and readies himself to head out, and stan holds him for a few seconds too long, face buried in his chest. he tells mike that he’s sorry he never got to live a real life, these past twenty-seven years. he’s sorry he forgot mike, forgot how much he cared about him, left him to suffer and remember alone.

and mike laughs, just like bill did, in that affectionate and understanding way, and it reminds stan why he loves _him_ so much. there’s a promise to call, often, as often as he can, and just like that he’s gone.

but none of them are gone for long. they meet up whenever possible, for silly reasons, for holidays, for made-up events. patricia is as observant as stan is. he knows she knows how he feels about his friends, but as long as he loves her, she’s content to take to the sidelines and let his heart ache. richie and eddie playact dismissiveness and derision toward each other and their relationship, but even the most obtuse observer could tell they don't mean any of it. beverly smiles more in that first year of constant contact than stan’s ever seen her smile before. ben is perfect for her, and they’re both smugly aware of how well they fit together.

mike and bill are just themselves, and that’s perfect for stan. that’s all he wants them to be. 

when stan _does_ die, he’s an old man. he goes a few years after his wife’s death, and he's buried in a nearby grave. he passes with a smile on his face, surrounded by the rest of them, telling them how they’re all idiots but he’s always loved them. richie is the next to go, a few days later, and then eddie the day after that. ben and beverly pass a few weeks down the line, within a few minutes of one another. then mike dies. then bill. they all choose to be buried in the same graveyard, and their families all agree it's fitting, if a little odd (after all, it _is_ a jewish cemetery).

somewhere very far away from here, the seventh kid joins the others, clinging to an eighth, much smaller, child. they hold hands and jump from a familiar quarry with peals of laughter, clinging to each other in the bright, sunny, untarnished summer day.

and stanley uris is at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote an old drabble about this, back in 2017 when i was hardcore into the IT fandom. i've since deleted the blog, and with the new movie coming out it didn't quite fit the current understood canon, so. i decided to rewrite it almost entirely, because we don't give my boy stan nearly the amount of attention he deserves. the rewrite happened during a bout of insomnia and i haven't edited it, so please don't judge it too harshly.


End file.
